Zoom in on PMA's Coolest Cams

LAS VEGAS -- It takes a special camera to stand out in the crowd, especially when it's surrounded by a bunch of other cool-looking cameras. The PMA 2008 convention and expo had tons of them on display, although most of the major announcements for the show took place the week before it or even weeks before it at the Consumer Electronics Show.

In any case, it was the first opportunity to see many of 2008's new cameras and camcorders up close and play around with some of the new gear. Here's a rundown of what drew interest and made the biggest impressions at PMA this year, as well as some camera trends for now and the future.

Every Camera's a Wi-Fi Cam (Sort Of)

Kodak made history back in 2005 when it announced the EasyShare-One camera , the first digital camera with built-in Wi-Fi capabilities. Well, Kodak's was the first unveiled; thanks to some delays, Nikon 's Wi-Fi-enabled Coolpix P1 beat Kodak's groundbreaking digicam to store shelves by about a week. So where are all the Wi-Fi cameras now?

They're both everywhere and nowhere, thanks to the $100 Eye-Fi wireless SD memory card . Eye-Fi nabbed a spot on the PC World's list of the 25 Most Innovative Products of 2007.

The 2GB card lets you upload your pics directly from the camera to photo-sharing sites such as Flickr without needing a USB cable or a PC. Nikon's new D60 digital SLR is even "enhanced" for the Eye-Fi card, as the camera will recognize the card's on board and disable its auto-shut-off mode until your pictures are completely uploaded.

The Eye-Fi seems to be capable and popular enough for most camera manufacturers to abandon the battle for the perfect Wi-Fi camera, but not all of them: Panasonic demoed a prototype Wi-Fi camera due for release later this year, which works with T-Mobile public hotspots and Google's Picasa photo application.

Nikon last introduced the Wi-Fi-enable Coolpix S51c last year, which also works with T-Mobile hotspots and comes with 2GB of free photo storage on the company's My Picturetown site.

DRM for Photos... In a Good Way

One of the most interesting and significant developments in the digital photo realm is being spearheaded by a non-profit coalition called PLUS (Picture Licensing Universal System). The group aims to embed licensing information and usage permissions directly into a digital photo's metadata, easing the process of determining copyright ownership and fair use for individual photos.

During a presentation at the pre-PMA DIMA conference, PLUS President and CEO Jeff Sedlick said the PLUS system of embedding licensing info in digital photographs can prevent legal liability issues for both retailers and customers when someone tries to reproduce a copyrighted image. PLUS has several big-name partners and supporters, including Adobe, Getty Images, Adbase, Digimarc, and the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC). Sedlick also says the organization is working with Creative Commons to simplify communication on whether specific images are public domain.

Cheese and Mug Detectors

One feature finding its way into many new point-and-shoots is smile detection, which takes face detection to an entirely new level. Sony , Canon, Nikon, Pentax, and Panasonic all announced cameras that take a picture automatically whenever someone in the shot smiles, and most of the cameras let you key in on an individual smiling face to act as the "trigger."

Smile detection is just one of a few advances in face-detection technology finding its way into many mainstream cameras.  Major vendors seem to be competing to see how many faces can be detected and focused in on in one shot (the Pentax Optio S12 seems to be in the lead, supporting up to 15 faces per photo). Sony's new Cyber-Shots also can differentiate between adult and child faces in a shot and trigger the shutter when the child smiles.

Weirdest Feature by Far

Sony's new Cyber-Shot DSC-T300, Cyber-Shot DSC-H10, Cyber-Shot W-150, and Cyber-Shot W-170 can even force people to smile . . . after the fact. An in-camera editing app lets you jack up the corners of a subject's mouth, so if they don't want to smile for the camera, you can pretend they did in post.

The results are hilarious and weird, making these Cyber-Shots the go-to camera for anyone who wants some extra laughs. The cameras even store the "fake smile" photos as separate images, so you don't need to worry about overwriting the original, frowny image -- and it also makes for a nice "before and after" slide show when you view the images in playback mode. If your subject didn't want to smile for the camera, they will after seeing their fake-smile pic.

Hybrid Cameras, In Many Ways

Could miniDV tapes and recordable DVDs be obsolete by this time next year? Hard-drive camcorders are nothing new, but more and more camcorders are abandoning cassettes and DVDs for solid-state storage, hard drives, and memory cards. Some models even record to a combination of hard drives, solid-state storage, and memory cards.

The AVCHD codec, new high-capacity SD cards, and higher-capacity flash drives mean a lot more high-def footage can fit on a storage device the size of a postage stamp. The result is a new wave of tiny, sleek HD camcorders.

A few models that caught my eye were announced at CES or Macworld Expo in January, but available for a closer look at PMA.  Among them were Panasonic's full 1080p HDC-SD9, which records to an SD card, Panasonic's HDC-HS9, which records to both an SD card and its integrated 80GB hard drive, and Canon's full 1080p Vixia HF10, which records to an internal 16GB flash drive and an SD memory card.

If you've still got a hankering for recordable DVDs, Sony's HDR-UX20 is a three-way hybrid: it records to DVD, an internal 8GB flash drive, and a MemoryStick card. And if you're looking for a high-def camcorder that also shoots high-quality stills, Sony's 1080p HDR-SR12 not only has a 120GB hard drive and a MemoryStick slot, but also takes 10-megapixel photos.

On the flip side of that equation -- a digital camera that shoots high-def video -- is Samsung's 10-megapixel NV24HD digital camera, which also shoots 720p high-def video.

All of these camcorders and cameras were announced at CES, but seeing them up close at PMA was a thrill due to their diminutive sizes.

Point-and-Shoots that Think They're SLRs

Sometimes you want a camera that feels like a real camera, even if you're a point-and-shoot level photographer. At first glance, Fujifilm's S1000fd and S8100fd, Sony's DSC-H10, the Olympus SP-570 UZ, Canon's PowerShot S5 IS, and Panasonic's DMC-FZ18 and DMC-FZ50 look like small DSLRs. But these fixed-lens cameras are a nice middle ground between high-end point-and-shoots and entry-level digital SLRs.

The advantage to these slightly bigger cameras? The ability to shoot video, which is something no digital SLR can do, and more manual controls than most compact point-and-shoots. They also all offer amazing optical zoom, with the Olympus SP-570 UZ setting the bar with a 20x optical zoom. The Fujifilm FinePix S8100fd (27mm) and Olympus SP-570 UZ (26mm) also boast wide-angle lenses.

They're solid buys, too: the 10-megapixel, 12x optical zoom Fujifilm S1000fd will cost $250 when it ships in March, while the spec champ of this set, the Olympus SP-570 UZ, is also scheduled for a March release, priced at $500. All the other "prosumer" models mentioned are in the $400 range.

DSLRs Mimicking Point-and-Shoots

Point-and-shoots aren't the only cameras doing impersonations these days. The latest digital SLRs are getting smaller (the Nikon D60, for example) and cheaper, adding Live View LCD screens (Canon's Digital Rebel XSi, the Pentax K20D, and Sony's Alpha 300 and Alpha 350), and boasting point-and-shoot-like feature sets.

The Nikon D60 has some on-board photo-editing functions and a stop-motion film mode that outputs as an AVI file, making it the dSLR that comes closest to actually shooting video. Sony's Alpha 300 and Alpha 350 have scene selections and fancy in-camera slide shows, and begin auto-focusing as soon as you raise the camera to your eye. With these features and sub-$1,000 prices, it looks like companies are trying to woo casual photographers who may be afraid that a digital SLR is "too much camera" for them.

But Wait, There's More!

Not enough PMA for you? Head on over to PC World's Cameras and Camcorders InfoCenter and click like crazy. Also, check out our complete PMA coverage.